We'll Take a Cup o' Kindness Yet
by Cascade Waters
Summary: Sometimes we need a little help, even when we're in trouble.  For Marie.


We'll Take a Cup O' Kindness Yet – for Supergirl

By firechild

Rated

Disclaimer

Warning

A/N

If he had to watch one more minute of daytime game shows, he was going to take that obnoxious price wheel and use it to flatten Drew Carey and Alex Trebekk. And then maybe drop it on the Survivor cast. And then he could somehow ensure that he would be the lead investigator, and he could declare it an anonymous act of heroism.

That idea made him feel better, but only slightly, and only until he remembered that the commissioner's wife actually hosted Survivor-themed parties every season.

With a huge, put-upon sigh, he raised the remote and turned off the tv. Oh, he knew no one was forcing him to watch the tripe—he was just bored out of his skull. He'd read two books already this week, and lacking any new material after that, he'd started to re-read another but hadn't been able to get into the story. Thanks to the cast and the infection (and to orders from his boss's boss) he was effectively under house arrest, and calling someone to come hang out with him to ease his loneliness was not only not his style, but not really a viable option—after all, no one he knew was talking to him.

And he'd thought he liked being alone.

He couldn't leave the house. He couldn't work out **inside** the house (he wasn't even supposed to set foot on the stairs, and while he hadn't really taken that proscription seriously, and he'd never admit this to anyone, the first trip up the stairs had worn him to the point of trembling, and he nearly hadn't made it back down without falling.) Try as he had and probably would again, he didn't have the strength (or the willingness to take enough pain meds) to stand in the kitchen long enough to do more than heat up soup or slap together a weak sandwich, and now that he was actually hungry for the first time in almost a week, that really annoyed him. He couldn't even bathe, as his downstairs bathroom didn't have a shower stall; he'd had to make do with a washcloth at the sink, which was mortifying and tiring. He had no shaving supplies downstairs, and he'd nearly tipped himself head-first into the washing machine when he'd tried to wash his clothes and his bathing cloth. Having a bum foot stank (and he was pretty sure that he did, too.)

The one thing he did have was time—time to think, time to grumble, time to reflect on his choices. And boy, was that fun.

They'd actually thought that they might get Christmas off. They were wrong, of course. Halfway through the team pig-out (which they were having as a team because none of them had managed to get out of town before catching a case involving poisoned candy canes) a roomful of pagers they'd meant to switch off came to noisy life. Four hours later, Flack and Stella were mopping up paperwork on a thankfully simple case, and he was in surgery, having his ankle set and temporarily caged.

When he came out of the anesthesia and got settled into a semi-private room for observation, he found himself surrounded by very concerned—and very angry—people who seemed to think that he'd made an inordinately stupid decision that had gotten him seriously injured (if he believed Flack, who was in an even worse mood than most of the others after all of the paperwork, then he could tack on 'nearly killed') when there were better options. He'd garnered a little bit of sympathy when an infection had set in and the doctors had had to go back in to clean out the wound, but that sympathy had lasted only as long as it took to determine that the infection was responding to treatment, and then it sparked even more fury from the people who'd become his family.

He was in the hospital for around 30 hours before the subway freeze and a myriad of blizzard-induced wrecks prompted the doctors to release him so that they could have the bed for more critical patients, and he was sent home with medications and strict orders regarding his ankle. Ten minutes after Flack helped him into the house and then left without a word, a representative from the commissioner's office called and informed him that his situation would be re-evaluated in two weeks.

"Wait," he said, trying to nail down precisely what was going on, "the attending said that I'd be okay to work in three days."

"No." The woman on the other end was crisp, and perhaps a little dry. And she was definitely not impressed by him. "She said that you should be sufficiently recovered to move around on crutches in three days, but that she didn't recommend your returning to work for at least two weeks."

He sputtered for a moment, tempted to argue that 'up on crutches' and 'back to work' were effectively the same thing, but then something else clicked. "Hold on—you mean I'm… I'm _grounded _for two weeks?"

"No," she said coolly. "You're grounded until further notice—your situation will be re-evaluated in two weeks, as I said. Since listening is evidently not your strong suit, I would suggest that you use this time of relative quiet to consider your current circumstances and what you might have done to avoid them. Have a nice day."

If he'd had an older sister, he was pretty sure that she'd have sounded just like that.

His friends might not be speaking to him, but it was fairly obvious that they hadn't forgotten him entirely; someone had stocked his kitchen with basic groceries and his prescriptions before he'd made it home from the hospital. Most of the fare—bread, cold cuts, soups in microwaveable containers, cereal, milk, and orange juice—was barely touched, as he'd been sick to his stomach from the infection and the antibiotics (and the pain,) but now that he was actually hungry and not just washing down pills with a bit of bread or soup when he absolutely had to, none of it appealed to him. And since he'd set his thermostat on a timer to conserve energy while he was working or using his vacation time, as he'd intended to do this week, his house was cold.

This was not the way he'd pictured spending New Year's Eve.

He was leaning on the doorway between the living room and kitchen, seriously contemplating driving left-footed to the grocery store, where at least it'd probably be warmer and he could walk around some (provided he didn't collapse from the exertion of getting out of the car, and didn't break his neck hobbling on the leftover ice,) when he heard the lock on his front door disengage. His hand automatically went for his sidearm, but of course there was nothing there but dirty sweats. In any case, it didn't matter, because a few seconds later, the door opened, and he had his first human contact in days.

The way his heart jumped might not have been very Marine, but he couldn't help it. To make up for it, though, he decided to try for nonchalant. "Hey, Danny."

The kid didn't even glance up until he'd gotten inside with several grocery bags and had shut the door with his foot, and then had shed his leather jacket which really wasn't thick enough for the weather. Then he looked up, his eyes resting on the older man for only a few seconds, assessing but otherwise unreadable, before shifting toward the kitchen, saying silently, "You're in my way." The other man moved aside, then turned to lean facing the kitchen and watched as Danny began unloading crackers, oatmeal, and other uninteresting provisions. It wasn't until he'd gotten some Gatorade and yogurt into the fridge that he turned, sighed, and met the other's eyes.

"Mac." Mac didn't quite know how to respond to Danny's tone, but he was really taken aback when his 'son' ran his hand through spiky blond hair and said tiredly, "Go sit down, get off of your leg. I'll be there in a couple of minutes."

That sounded so much like an order, and so much more like Mac than like Danny, that Mac started to obey before he even really thought about it, and by then, despite the urge to defy the command and scold his boy for speaking to him that way, Mac's own body was demanding that he sit down before he could fall down. It didn't make sense to him that he was still so weak and had so little stamina; he'd been staying down (mostly) and had taken his medication (well, one of the antibiotics… he really didn't see the need to take both of them, and the pain pills were just not his thing, even though Tylenol wasn't doing anything for him and he'd been out of Aleve since Danny's second wisdom tooth had impacted.) He'd even caught himself napping here and there out of sheer boredom, though he couldn't really sleep for more than about half an hour at a time without his ankle waking him. He should be fine.

He wondered why Danny was here. Well, yeah, he'd brought groceries, but he could just as easily have called in a delivery order for Mac… or just not bothered at all. After a week of the cold shoulder, part of Mac couldn't help but grouse that he hadn't asked for Danny's help and he didn't need or want it. The rest of him, though, knew that he should be grateful. And, when Danny did venture into the living room and take a seat on the couch, he realized that he was. Even though his kid was looking at him the way Mac must have looked at said kid dozens of times, times which Danny would no doubt like to forget. The older man finally sighed and tilted his head back, closing his eyes. "Go ahead. Say it."

Danny was silent for a moment, and Mac was really starting to worry when his son said, quietly and simply, "No."

Mac raised his head and looked at Danny in surprise. "No? You've been ignoring me for a week, and now you have the perfect opportunity to let me have it with both barrels, and all you can say is 'no?'"

Danny leveled a sort of sad look at his dad. "No. I didn't come here to rip you a new one, no matter how much I think you deserve it."

Mac quirked a brow. "Then why are you here? Not that I'm not glad to see you—I am."

Danny sat back, looking a little guilty… and, now that Mac had enough light to really see him, more than a little tired. "I miss you. I've been thinking about you all week, and… look, I know it's weak, but I cave, okay? I'm still mad at you, and maybe you're really a lot happier without the company and the noise and… well, me… but I miss you, and I had to make sure that you were okay. And I really didn't like the idea of you spending New Year's Eve alone. Unless you want to, I mean."

Mac was touched. Okay, he was beyond touched. "Of course I want you here! But what about Lindsay and Lucy? Won't they worry about you?"

"Nah." Danny slumped forward and seemed to relax a bit, having heard that he was welcome. "To tell you the truth, Linds is a little bit disgusted with me. She's all for leaving you to stew till the end of next week, or till you cry 'Uncle.' I just… couldn't." He chuckled wryly. "I've been kind of a mess the last couple of days. Finally I just couldn't do it anymore. I think, if I hadn't said that I was gonna come be with you tonight, Linds maybe would've booted me over here herself. Lucy's too little to remember that I wasn't there—heck, she'll be passed out before the 8 o'clock movie starts—and I think Linds's gonna do a video chat thing with her sister to celebrate. So no one misses me."

Mac leaned sideways, just managing to ruffle his kid's hair as he said, "I have." Danny all but giggled as he pulled away, though notably not until after his dad had mussed his careless spikes.

And just like that, the evening started to seem a little better.

And then it improved exponentially. "So… what do you need?" Danny peered at his dad, rubbing his hands together in a universal sign for 'let's get down to business.' "You wanna shower?"

Mac smiled. "Danny, my boy, those are the nicest words you've ever said to me."

Ten minutes later, the lower third of Mac's right leg was encased in a garbage bag (Mac was pretty sure that the NYPD hadn't intended for their zip ties to be used in such a manner, but it was either that or tape, and neither of the men was in a mood for duct-waxing) and Mac started up the stairs with Danny a few steps behind him. When Mac stopped halfway up and Danny caught up with him, the boy looked critically at his dad, said, "Shower's not happening," and situated himself under Mac's arm, replacing the crutch. Danny got Mac up the stairs and to the master suite, where he gently plunked his dad onto the end of the bed, then went into the bathroom, his father's protests trailing him. Mac, who'd thought for a minute that Danny was going to insist on a sponge bath or other such nonsense, was deeply relieved when he heard the water running in the bathtub and saw Danny emerge with Mac's robe. "We can stick a pillow on the edge, and you can just lay your ankle on it; ain't perfect, but it should work."

Danny helped Mac shed his sweats and climb into the blessedly hot bath, seeming somewhat less embarrassed than he had the last time Mac had had to help him shower. Danny stuck the soap and a cloth within easy reach, picked up the clothes, and left Mac to soak. Mac basked for about half an hour, able to rewarm the water with his good foot, and then he must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew, a scared-looking Danny was shaking his shoulder. His son had left him alone until the water had gone cool, and when Mac was alert again, a relieved Danny plucked Mac's shampoo from the shower rack and used a big plastic tumbler to help his dad rinse after soaping his hair.

Getting out wasn't fun or easy, but the two men managed it, and when Mac was robed and no longer dripping, Danny handed him an electric razor and then bounded off downstairs again. He came back a few minutes later with boxers and a single thick sock which he'd pulled out of the dryer (and apparently he'd fluffed it first, because the sock felt nearly as warm on Mac's left foot as the bathwater had,) popped back into the bedroom, and reappeared with fresh sweats.

Mac heard the dryer going again as they reached the first floor and Danny helped his dad back into the living room. The little sneak had been busy while Mac was snoozing in the hot water—there was now a fire blazing cheerfully where Mac had been out of kindling two hours ago, and there was a sort of pallet laid out on the floor. Danny lowered his dad onto the pallet and helped him get situated with a pillow under his ankle, and Mac gazed fairly contentedly into the fire for a while before he realized that he was smelling something… interesting. He didn't really have the will to shout just at the moment, so he settled himself to wait for Danny to let him in on what was cooking.

And the wait was worth it—Danny soon handed Mac a lap tray with a very small bowl of salad, a few pear slices, and a helping of what looked like shepherd's pie but had cornbread instead of mashed potatoes. The boy claimed that it was a mild Mexican casserole. Danny came back with his own tray and plopped down next to his dad, and the two ate to the tune of the crackling fire. It was so nice that Mac could have fallen asleep like that, but curiosity had hold of him now.

"So…" Time to play it cool. "How're things in the lab? Everyone doing okay?"

"Suspended, Mac. That means no work, and no backseat working. I'm not telling you anything."

Mac rolled his eyes and sighed, but knew that he could only avoid the issue for so long. Still… "So how's that baby?"

Danny couldn't help the grin that took over his face. "She is so amazing, Mac." He launched into an accounting of his daughter's growth and discoveries and firsts over the couple of weeks since the two men had really talked, and they laughed and grinned like sops over the little girl whom they both adored. "Seriously, man, I… I didn't think it was possible to love a person so much; like, I didn't think a person could hold that much love for someone, or want so much to protect that someone."

Danny gazed at the fire. Mac turned his head to look at Danny, one eyebrow quirked in fond exasperation. "Really?"

Danny glanced at him and then did a double-take, obviously confused. "What?"

In answer, Mac laid his tray next to his other side and then reached out, grabbed his kid with both arms, and tugged him sideways until the laughing, protesting Danny was half-laying across his dad, his back to Mac's solar plexus as the older man simultaneously hugged, tickled, and lightly shook his boy. They played for a couple of minutes, and then Mac tightened his embrace, leaning his head down to speak close to Danny's ear. "_I_ could have told you _that_**!**" Then he popped a kiss on Danny's temple.

Danny blushed and smiled, and didn't ask to be let up until he just couldn't breathe anymore. Then Mac helped him to sit up, but left an arm slung gently around Danny's shoulders. Danny laid his head sideways for a moment, resting it on Mac's shoulder; when he sighed and raised his head, his dad told him that he didn't have to move if he didn't want to, but Danny shook his head. "You take your meds?"

Mac tried a blank look, but Danny looked so knowing and so… paternal, that Mac finally broke off with a roll of his eyes. "I actually only need this one," he said, holding up a pink-and-blue capsule. His son's quick and firm reply took him by surprise.

"No, actually, you need all of them. I read the scrip sheets; you've eaten, you're not gonna drive or operate heavy machinery. You can take all of them together." He looked at his dad expectantly, and if Mac wasn't so content—and so tired—he'd bust the presumptuous little punk. As it was, he set himself the task of staring Danny down like a proper Marine.

Didn't work.

Evidently Mac had taught Danny very, very well. The younger cop stared right back, arms folded, green eyes narrowed and hard. Mac told himself that he'd have won the stupid staredown if only his own eyes hadn't started to blur and cross. He was determined to stay awake, to keep control over his own body—he'd been snoozing here and there, sure, but mostly out of boredom, and he'd been a little sick to his stomach (and a couple of times, more than a little) but that was thanks mostly to the infection and the stress of not being able to work. He suspected that the other antibiotic might irritate his stomach, and he was certain that the pain medication would make him drowsy. But the sudden thought that Danny might leave, might even regret coming in the first place, moved Mac to reconsider. He wanted to keep the peace with this young man, this son who alone had relented or at least sidelined his anger with Mac and had given up the chance to snuggle down in a warm and cozy apartment and celebrate the holiday with his wife and infant daughter to drive over here and cook and do laundry and sit on the floor and take care of a man to whom no one else was speaking. That meant something.

Well, Mac decided, he'd just have to Marine up and not let the drugs dictate his behavior.

He gathered up the pills and tossed them back with a swallow from his water glass; when Danny pointedly cleared his throat and looked at the glass, Mac rolled his eyes but drank the rest of the water.

That seemed to flip a switch in Danny, who lit up. Mac actually thought that his son was going to say, "Good boy," in which case Mac would be forced to disassemble him, but either the younger man had no such intention, or he picked up on his dad's thoughts, because he switched directions—literally. He turned to the left and pulled away, but before Mac could protest, Danny leaned down and then sat back up, holding yet another bag. "I, uh, thought you might be bored, so I brought some stuff for you. I didn't really figure you'd be all that impressed with All My Children."

Mac snorted. "Are you kidding me? If I were there, no one in that town would ever sit again." Danny chuckled, and probably hoped that his dad didn't notice how he squirmed a bit at the same time. Ah, let the boy have his illusions. "So, what'd you bring?" Mac knew that he sounded like a small child waiting for presents from an adult's business trip, but that was actually pretty much how he felt—warm, safe, loved, taken care of, and about to be surprised.

"Uh…" Danny suddenly seemed nervous, though he was still smiling faintly. "Well, I wasn't too sure what you already have or had seen, so I just, um…" He reached into the canvas tote bag, which had the name of a discount bookstore on two sides. "They're not new, sorry."

Mac waved that off. "I don't need new, and you don't need to go broke trying to entertain me."

"'Kay. Well, anyway, I got, um, let's see…" Danny pulled out three VHS tapes, having remembered that Mac had yet to go purely digital. "Um, we got Pearl Harbor, Ray, and something called The Villain." Danny shrugged. "I thought I remembered you rockin' the Western thing, and this one has Kirk Douglas. There was this one movie they were tryin' to sell me, about some guy who got shot in the rear end in Vietnam, but I didn't really think you'd like it."

Mac took the tapes and looked over the sleeves. "These sound great—thanks, kiddo."

"But I knew that that would only take up, like, six hours, so I bought you some books, too. I really didn't know what you'd want, I mean, other than Tom Clancy, and you have the latest one—I checked. So I just… guessed. If you don't like 'em—"

Mac waved that off, too. "I'm sure they're great. Now are you gonna tell me what they are already?"

Danny snickered and dug in again. "I thought really hard about a couple of the In Death books, but I didn't figure you'd wanna come home from investigating murders in the lab to do the same thing on the page. So I brought a couple of Steven Coontz sci-fis that looked kinda interesting, and all of the Destroyermen books I could find, and…" he handed those to Mac while he dug deeper into the bag, where something made an odd crinkling noise, "the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit. I heard they have good battles."

Mac grinned. "They do. Haven't you ever read them?"

"Nah. Pops kinda thought it was sissy for a guy to read, and Louie wouldn't've been caught dead with a book that didn't have a bunch of names and dollar signs in it. I owe my high school diploma to the Clif's Notes guy."

Mac looked sideways at his son. "No, you owe it to your own intelligence and hard work, maybe even harder than I thought. Danny… didn't your mother read to you?"

Danny looked down, self-conscious, as if he was admitting to doing something wrong. "Nah, not really. I mean, she might pick up the tabloids sometimes, but she didn't read 'em to me. I mostly learned from first grade, and from the license plate game; I got real tired of my brother beating my arm black and blue 'cause he knew more than just the ones that were only one color."

Mac decided right then and there that he really needed to track down Hank Messer and… thank… him for being such a stellar father. And he might've started that process right then, if he wasn't feeling so heavy and more nauseated than he'd been all day.

Danny didn't know what his dad had been thinking, but he did notice that Mac was starting to look a little queasy. He reached into the tote bag yet again, and brought out the crinkling culprit—a bag from the pharmacy. "The tech warned me that the antibiotics would probably upset your stomach, so he told me to get you some peppermints and some gum, said they'd help with the nausea. Boy, I could'a used that when I was a kid."

Mac accepted the sack gratefully, keeping his thoughts about what Danny had told him to himself, for now at least. As he unwrapped a starlight disk for each of them, he looked down at the stack of books between his hip and his tray. Danny followed his gaze and misinterpreted his thoughts. "Oh! Sorry, yeah, forgot." He popped up and snatched up both trays, ferrying them off to the kitchen. Mac knew that he was off his game because it was only then that he noticed that Danny was wearing his shoes.

"Well, for Pete's sake, son, why don't you take off your shoes and stay awhile?" He could all but hear Danny's confused blinking, and he mentally tallied a point for himself.

"Oh. I didn't even think about it." And now Mac knew for sure that Danny had really been affected by the past week; shoes were usually the first things to go when Danny arrived at either of his homes. Danny stood at the end of the couch and shed his trainers, which really weren't enough protection in this weather, and then came and plopped down again next to his dad. Mac handed him one of the mint disks, and then held out his arm in invitation. Danny hesitated for a moment, as if he was worried that he might be misreading the gesture, but then he tentatively worked his way to a comfortable position against his dad, and Mac squeezed him and kissed the top of his head in approval. Then the older man opened the book he'd selected.

"You like maps?"

"Huh?" Danny pulled up to look at Mac in confusion.

Mac pulled him back down to rest again. "Never mind. We can look at the map later." He flipped to the first page of the story, blinking against the heaviness in his eyelids.

"Whatcha doin'?"

"I'm going to read to you."

Danny's breath caught. "Really?" He almost whispered.

Mac smiled sadly. "Yes, really." He patted Danny's side. "'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort….'

Mac emerged from a rather fragmented dream that had involved fingerprinting dwarves, and found that Danny was once again shaking his shoulder. The boy handed him a glass of water and another pill, which Mac took because he didn't have the energy to fight. Then Danny reclaimed the empty cup… and replaced it with a wineglass that was two-thirds full of something pale and fizzy. "Oh, Danny, thanks, but I—"

"Yeah, you can," Danny broke in. He held up his own glass. "Marianno's. Non-alcoholic." He smiled at his dad to show that he'd remembered about the medication and had covered the bases.

He'd also turned on the TV, though the sound was muted. Startled at the sight of Times Square full and hopping, Mac looked up at the clock. He'd drifted off somewhere around the third chapter of the book, and Danny had let him nap until just about thirty minutes before midnight. Mac still felt muzzy and heavy, and most of him really wanted to just curl up and go back to dreaming of stuffing Gandalf in a decon shower, but Danny had come to celebrate the new year with him, and he wouldn't disappoint his son.

Danny offered to un-mute the tv, but Mac agreed with his son that the musical presentations were probably more entertaining without the actual music, so they sat together and snickered at the figures on the screen while Danny played MC. At about ten minutes to midnight, he stood up (apparently most of his energy was gone, and Mac could now see that Danny probably hadn't slept well for days) and went to the kitchen and came back with soft ginger cookies still warm from the oven; Mac wondered if Danny realized that ginger would also help to settle his stomach, or if no one had bothered to try anything when the boy was young and sick. He didn't ask, though, as he didn't want to embarrass Danny or make himself angry again. He didn't have the umph for that.

Danny's enthusiasm, yawn-laced though it was, was also contagious, and they counted down the last ten seconds together, then toasted each other and sipped their not-quite-champagne, which actually turned out to be a bit tastier than the real thing. They shared a hug, and when Danny called Lindsay to wish her a happy new year, Mac chimed in from the background and considered her curt, "Yeah, you, too," to be progress.

Danny helped a sluggish Mac to the bathroom and came back for him when Mac called his name, then asked him if he wanted to go back to the couch. Mac nodded. "The picnic on the floor was great, but between you and me, my backside is sore now."

Danny looked at his dad challengingly. "Between you and me, Mac, you have no idea what a sore backside feels like."

Danny eased him down to lay and covered him with the blankets Mac had been using, and then straightened up the living room and tended the well-stoked fire. The younger cop was wiping his hands on his jeans and toeing his way back into his shoes when Mac caught his wrist. "And just where do you think you're going, young man?" When Danny glanced toward the front door, Mac gripped tighter. "Oh, uh-unh. No way. Every drunken idiot in the Burroughs is out on the roads right now; you're not going anywhere." He might be drugged and in disgrace, but he knew that his tone brooked no argument.

And Danny didn't try. He toed off his shoes again, then started to turn toward the stairs and, presumably, his old room. Mac didn't let go. "Hey! Did I not say, 'anywhere?'" He gave a little tug on Danny's wrist while using his free hand to peel back his blankets. Danny looked kind of uncertain, so Mac yanked, and Danny very shortly found himself sharing the couch, and the blankets, with his dad. Well, one thing about it—even if the fire died, Danny wouldn't likely get cold between the two blankets and his still-feverish father.

As the two lay in a room lit only by the street lamp two doors down and the fire in their own hearth, Mac whispered, "Danny?"

The young man, comfortable and close to sleep, replied with a, "Hmm?"

Mac eyed the form of the kid in his arms. "Do you really believe that I made a mistake?"

Danny stiffened a little, but when he answered, his tone was sad more than anything. "Mac, I don't think you 'made a mistake.' I think your pride got in the way of your brain and you well and truly screwed up and for Christmas everybody who loves you got to almost watch you die." He held himself stiff for another moment, then relaxed and settled in, and he was asleep in seconds.

Mac, on the other hand, tightened his hold on Danny and realized that, drugs or no drugs, sleep wasn't going to come quickly for him as he thought over what his son had said, and what everyone else hadn't said. The decision that had caused so much trouble had taken two seconds to make, but the new year was two hours old before Mac Taylor, who had refused all week to think about how he'd landed in this position, found himself dreaming of the events of Christmas day—and this time, the part of Mac Taylor was played by Danny Messer.

Seven hours later, knowing that he'd been sick in his dream, he woke to find that he was now laying on a towel and had a different blanket, and that there was a trash can by the head of the couch. The fire was out, the house was chilly, and he was alone.


End file.
